Have you used SATA or USB Tape Backups successfully?

Have you used SATA or USB Tape Backups successfully?

Have need for a tape backup, the server does not have a SCSI controller and do not have the budget to add one.

I need a low cost backup solution, that includes looking at both the price of the drive as well as the price of the media for it. We currently have SCSI DAT72 on another system that is about to be phased out, so leaning hard to stay with DAT72 just so we don't have to invest in new tapes for a bit.

I have seen several tape backups listed online in the 500 to 700 range, some by HP looked good to me.

My question is, has anyone had any personal success or failure using either SATA or USB drives?

Both fit my budget (which is almost nothing). Not a lot being backed up and done at night, so I don't care about the speed of the backup. Just want one that will be dependable.

You mentioned that you don't have the budget to invest in a SCSI controller? As long as there is an available slot in the server, there are good SCSI controllers available for less than $100.

There's even an HP DAT72 tape backup New/Refurb-In-Box on eBay cheap. It's the USB version. I've used USB external drives a couple times, and my only complaint was speed. That was mostly an issue for restore; backup was overnight, "set it and forget it" and speed didn't matter. It was done by morning. Restore requests were somewhat of a pain, but again, just start it and walk away. But the SCSI drives tended to run noticeably faster.

Also, if the old server is being phased out, can you scavenge the DAT72 from the old server into the new server? That would seem to be the lowest-cost option.

It has been there for a while. It also won't be phased out as a server until the end of the project, so would need that server to continue to perform backups for at least another week beyond when I need this one up and going.

They are prepared to bite the bullet for around 600, and I am not willing to put my name/reputation on the line with used equipment just to save them a few hundred.

We've tried both USB and eSATA drives, we've had reliability issues. Weird stuff, like a server crashing or locking up when removing or connecting the drive. That seemed to be server dependent, so it could have been bad drivers or hardware. But it definitely burned us! Once we found a hardware combo that worked, it seems to be OK.

Yeah, I know what you mean. We swap the drives to take them off site. Every time I look at tape, it is so much more expensive than disc on a per-TB basis once you get to the big numbers, it seems like. But swapping external drives has a headache factor too, in that you need to make sure it gets the same drive letter, is formatted right, has the correct permissions on it, etc.

If you won't be dealing with it once it is set up, paying more for tape now will probably save them in headaches down the road.

and I really don't trust the users to be carrying around a removable hard drive.

Putting in a comprehensive backup solution a year ago like I wanted was not important, but since our unbacked up email system died last week, it is suddenly a justified expense. Not saying I told them so, but I did.

Side note, I want this to be as simple of a solution as possible. I need it to "just work" easily and reliably.

I just wasn't sure if I wanted the USB or SATA. The drive will never be disconnected as I am also going to be consolidating all of their computer needs from 4 old servers down to one new server. They will be in a MUCH better position to maintain this if/after I am gone with the changes I am going to be putting in place.

At a Government Department here they delegated the Backup Job to a Night Time Security Guard who had no idea of anything to do with computers. He was told to bung the tape in press these 2 buttons and then he could walk away which is exactly what he did.

6 Months latter when the server HDD's died and all of their Data went with it they discovered that for the past 6 months the Tape Drive was broken and only ran for a minute or two. Long enough for the Security Guard to walk away and not know even if he had of known any better.

The one thing to look at though with External Tapes is the ability to Format the Tape in the External Drive.

I don't have any experience with these things other than 1 instance years ago and I found that because you where unable to format the Tape it wasn't a really good solution.

The drive would mess up the Tape's Formatting and then you have to replace the otherwise perfectly good tape. Of course if you got tapes with the Wrong Format or unformatted they where useless with that drive as well.

HP which covers a wide range of Drive Makes, make a part way decent drive but they don't repair them they replace them while Under Guarantee and when they are no longer UG they expect you to buy new.

Works OK provided that you don't need backward compatibility as I've had several customers who use HP tape drives that needed data off Tapes written to by the Old Drives. Their newly replaced drives didn't read the tapes even though they where the same form factor.

These days there are a multitude of SATA Drives that are available and they all seem to work well. The Internal USB ones that I've seen use 2 USB Ports to increase Data Speed but can be a bit flaky when used with Windows but seem to work OK when used on a Nix based system.

My personal preference these days is for the Tandenberg Drives but they are sort of pricey and more high end probably too expensive for what your company wants at the moment. Of course when they loose Data and can not recover it they see them as cheap.

Sony has some decent low end Drives as well and then there are the IBM drives used in Tape Libraries which are way overpriced but very good. I love the things they just are unlikable but by the same token you pay for them to begin with.

Just go with what you can afford or have budgeted and make sure that they are bolted to a metal frame to disperse as much heat as possible. It doesn't hurt having 2 drives if they are low end drives that way you can recover off the second drive in the file cabinet when the first one fails. Great if the replacement drive that is supplied doesn't read the old tapes which is very common.

I just flog 2 drives every time that I need to and keep one as a backup so that when the Drive fails you can still have access to the Data. It's much cheaper than needing to send the Tape to a Data Recovery Specialist . I've needed to do that on more than 1 occasion and the companies see just how cheap a second drive is in comparison.

Just remember to get a Cleaning Tape and use it regularly it's very important with these drives.

that's been my experience and seems as well as everyone elses. No one knows if there's something on the tape until emergency time.

Hopefully your customer realizes that someone's gotta look at the data on the tape. That's where Justin's USB HDDs are more appealing. you can actually look into the drive and check files and folders. Might require some prelim steps to make sure the backup software finds the right drive, but atleast someone can look at the data easily enough to verify it's there.

note: the thing about backups is, checking to make sure there's stuff actually on the tape that's usable. Many believe since a backup is run the data is safe, and we've all heard the stories, or are actually the IT guy who goes in when a server crashes, everyone smiling thinking they got backups, only to find out, there's nothing usable on the tape.

There's always the cloud but ya know, I just don't trust "the cloud" vendors.

It came with Symantec backup exec. To activate, they say go to their website, but of course the link is dead. (nice job Quantum, way to be on the ball!).

Go to the main page and able to register the drive, but nothing to activate the software. (nice job Quantum, way to be on the ball!).

Call their "support" and the fool who answered thought it was OBVIOUS that it was a different link to symantec (even though the printed instructions THEY provided say otherwise)(nice job Quantum, way to be on the ball!).

After filling out the form and waiting for about 20 minutes, the activation code FINALLY comes in. Of course it isn't in a form that I can just copy/paste in, so I have to type it in. (I guess I can blame Symantec for this one)

Have the server running a Full backup to make sure everything is working properly, and will move all services over to the server tomorrow if everything goes well.

I was following your post and I have to say that I have definitely fallen into similar situations as you have, both in private contracts and employers alike. Budgets seem to get smaller and smaller until there's a problem, and then the wallets come out.

The hard part is to push the I told you so's into a more proactive approach, as to avoid the pinching pain of the scathing critics on the projects. Over the years, I have managed to push the clients agenda only so far, until I come across a scenario where business continuity is in jeopardy, and then it is their choice.

I have always liked SATA connections over USB when in a pinch, as an external SATA card can be used, or if you have an additional slot, you can put a 10$ expansion esata port in. That way, the drive that you have connected is viewed by the OS as perpetually connected, and thus is more reliable when you use windows backup, symantec, or some third party software.

Either way, I was curious on the stability of the hardware/software combo that you used. Congrats, and good luck on future projects.